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Places We Protect

Zapata Ranch Preserve

Colorado

Buffalo grazing on grass with mountains in the background.
Grazing Buffalo Herd A buffalo herd grazes in grasslands at the base of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains adjacent to the Great Sand Dunes National Park at Medano-Zapata Ranch in southern Colorado. © Dave Showalter

Splendor among the Great Sand Dunes and the Sangre De Cristo Mountain Range.

Overview

Description

Location

South central Colorado: near the town of Mosca in the San Luis Valley.

The ranch is not far from the Great Sand Dunes National Park, site of the tallest sand dunes in North America.

Why TNC Selected This Site

Because it provides landscape-scale conservation of a biologically significant area containing several rare animal and plant species—some found nowhere else in the world.

What TNC Has Done/Is Doing

In 1999, The Nature Conservancy made conservation history by acquiring this preserve, its largest in Colorado.

TNC manages the ranches for two reasons: to protect their significant natural values and to demonstrate how cattle and bison operations can co-exist with conservation efforts. TNC is not currently operating cattle at this preserve.

Staff at the Zapata Ranch focus on:

  • Conducting naturalist workshops
  • Scientific research
  • Operating a bison ranch

Access

CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC

Size

100,000 acres

Explore our work in Colorado

Sights of Zapata Ranch Preserve

A herd of bison grazing in a meadow.
A flock of sandhill cranes flying through the sky.
Sunset on mountains.
A field of yellow flowers with mountains in the background.
A herd of bison grazing in a meadow.

Bison Herd : Bison grazing on the Zapata Ranch with the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Sangre de Cristo mountains in the background in Colorado. © Nick Hall

A flock of sandhill cranes flying through the sky.

Sandhill Crane Migration: Sandhill cranes in flight at TNC's Medano-Zapata Ranch Preserve in the San Luis Valley, Colorado. © Hannah Floyd

Sunset on mountains.

Medano-Zapata Ranch: Sand dunes from Big Spring Creek at Medano-Zapata Ranch in Colorado. © Harold E. Malde

A field of yellow flowers with mountains in the background.

CO071906_D004: This diverse habitat view, photographed from the Medano Zapata ranch, shows flowering prairie, The Great Sand Dunes National Park and the distant Sangre de Cristo mountains of southern Colorado. © Wendy Shattil & Bob Rozinski

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